Tales of the Kurgan
by Lousy Poet Automaton
Summary: The Kurgan was satisfied.  He had been lost, at first, when he left the Game.  Disillusioned, with no goal, nothing to dream.  But this, this was a fine thing indeed.  He had taught her much, and now, she was ready to be unleashed.
1. Chapter 1: Quitting the Game

"Tales of the Kurgan"

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Disclaimer: I don't own Highlander. Also, anything other than the first movie and the first season of the TV series left a bad taste in my mouth, so no aliens, no Richie becoming an Immortal, etc. There will be crossovers. This is a whim-driven project in-between sessions of getting rejection letters for my original books, so if you hassle me for updates, know that I don't give a crap. I am also throwing in my own interpretations for the magic of immortals.

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Every kill was sweet.

But this? This would be one of the sweetest! A duel by the light and glorious music of a storm and here was the moment. Ramirez was only one of the many foes he had chased down through the centuries, but this cultured, pretentious fop had fucked up too many of his plans. Not to mention the prick's infinitely condescending disdain.

"Who is the woman?"

"She's mine!" gasped out the gray-haired peacock.

The Kurgan's smile stretched from ear to ear. He pondered whether or not he would dismember Ramirez just so he could make the Egyptian watch as he raped his woman in front of him.

He laughed and felt the Power roar through his blood, felt the lightning crash around them in response. He was the Kurgan. He was invincible. The wound in his throat was already fully healed. It would have been fatally incapacitating for any other immortal. The thought of making him watch pushed blood into the Kurgan's prodigious cock. He would enjoy it, oh yes!

The frustration of having lost the trail of the Highlander once more had almost made him finish Ramirez too quickly, but now the Kurgan thought this was even better. Ramirez was one of the most learned of their kind, and if the Kurgan could not take the Highlander this night, he ought to take advantage of the contents of this pretentious nobleman's head before he claimed it off his fat body.

He pulled his greatsword out of Ramirez's belly with a twist, dragging out torn, bloody guts, and raised it in a high stance.

"Tell me of the PRIZE!"

Ramirez grimaced, spat on his boots.

"You know all an immortal needs to know of it! Now slay me you wretched _nithing_!"

The Kurgan smirked. Such defiance. He had broken men _and_ immortals across thousands of years. He drew a dagger from his boot and plunged it high into Ramirez's upper thigh, angled just so.

The withered one's voice twisted and shrieked like a girl's as the blade entered the muscle, passed out, and the point tore open one of his balls, spilling the whitish coils of tubules out of the bloody sack.

He crouched next to the wrecked body of his old foe, filled his voice with the Power of the Quickening, battered at Ramirez's will with his own. "You were one of the last ones to read the secrets of Alexandria! Tell me of the Prize or I shall make you watch while I fuck the woman with my cock and spit her on my blade _slowly_. I will cook her bit by bit and make her eat it! Oh you know, ancient one, you _know_ I have many, many skills at making it last. Her mind will break while she still lives, she won't even be able to beg for the death she'll want!"

Tears down that face. The Kurgan relished the pain and fear, the humiliation.

Ramirez's head tilted close, and whispered in the conqueror's ear.

"What!" The Kurgan's empowered scream rumbled across the hills, louder than the thunder in the sky. "You LIE!"

He lifted Ramirez by the throat and flung him down from the steps. He jumped after him, smashing feet first into Ramirez's abdomen, pulping his guts, filling the air with the stench.

Ramirez's face was white with blood loss and terror. "I am not lying! It is the Power to Rule!"

"Not that you stinking weakling! You're lying about the cost!"

And then the fear was fading from the Egyptian's eyes. And he started to laugh. "Can it be possible, Kurgan?" Ramirez choked out, gasping. "Can it be there is something you fear after all? Can it be that all these centuries, I could have taken you out of the Game by just telling you?"

"I can RULE this world as it is! Stop lying to me!"

Weakly, Ramirez lifted his palms up, spread them. He was still chuckling even as blood poured from his lips. "I am beaten, Kurgan. I am in your Power. I have nothing left to deceive you with. You can sense the truth in me..."

The maddening thing was, he could!

The Kurgan raised his blade straight up into the air and screamed in fury. Lightning flashed down from the sky and struck him. Even as his flesh burned and sizzled from the heat, he was healing, and his fury was an endless storm.

Ramirez closed his eyes, preparing for the end.

"Fuck you, Egyptian! Fuck it all!"

With that, the Kurgan stalked away, ignoring the broken one's wheezing laughter.

What was the point of winning the Game if it mean losing immortality?

And so the most powerful and bloodthirsty of all of them simply stopped. He faded in and out of history, fighting in wars, murdering, stealing, raping as he chose. While he never hesitated in humiliating any that came for him, maiming them, torturing them, sparing them as the mood took him, the Kurgan stopped taking the heads of other immortals.

After all, each other immortal that died only brought him closer to death too.

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	2. Chapter 2: I am Victor Kruger

"Tales of the Kurgan"

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Disclaimer: I don't own Highlander. Also, anything other than the first movie and the first season of the TV series left a bad taste in my mouth, so no aliens, no Richie becoming an Immortal, etc. There will be crossovers. This is a whim-driven project in-between sessions of getting rejection letters for my original books, so if you hassle me for updates, know that I don't give a crap. I am also throwing in my own interpretations for the magic of immortals.

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July, 1942.

Vadim Karolekov woke up to a dark dawn. The skies were darkened by the smoke of the fires, the ash and dust thrown into the air by the explosions. It was just a gray crack he could see in the darkness. The bombs had been falling for days. He almost did not notice them anymore.

He had to admit that the progress of warfare had been quite stunning over the years. He could still remember the awe he felt when a one-ton boulder had spun lazily down out of the air and smashed a hole in his castle wall. It had seemed as if the gods themselves had decided to side with the enemy. And now? The earth and sky were conquered by human machinery, human hands. Guns were no longer awkward muskets requiring long seconds of packing powder and ball and then lighting it off, there were modern bullets, with cartridges, fired by guns that could reach out across unfathomable distances.

With a grunt, a searing effort that scraped his thigh and back bloody, he got another inch forward. He felt the concrete shift overhead.

He heard German voices in the distance, over the crack of gunfire, the panicked retreat of Russians.

And he felt it, another of them, among the Germans.

He had his Quickening pulled tight inside of himself, so much so that he barely cast a shadow. It was a trick he had learned from great old Chingiz Khan himself, whom he had met on the wild plains of Mongolia. If he chose, he could simply wait there, buried in the darkness, until the Germans rolled their way past this city, and on to the East, no one the wiser to his presence. In that moment he decided that he was sick of living the humble life of a mortal yet again. It had gotten boring. There was a war going on around him, and now was the time to feast on the blood.

He let go of his name and the personality that had gone with it, put the watchmaker's skills to one side. Ever the anarchist, he had fomented unease against Stalin's iron hooks with philosophy, with words. The time for pansy discussions and arguments was over.

The Kurgan stoked the smoldering embers of his power higher. Higher. His frame shook and shivered with the power. He announced his rebirth with a roar that rumbled across the chaos of the battlefield, and the darkening of the skies, and an explosion driven purely by the muscles of his arms and legs and back as he shoved his way upright, shifting aside half a ton of rubble.

Searing heat bloomed in little flowers across his chest. Terrified Germans, staring at him. He laughed at them, and when he ran at them, a giant of a man in torn, dust-covered black leathers, they could only gawk as their guns did nothing to him.

Now he was in arm's reach. His hand closed 'round the nearest one's rifle. He tore it away, spun it with a flourish, jammed it through the soldier's eye and out the back of the skull, sending the helm flying.

"Peekaboo, mein herr!"

He fired and killed a second mortal, drew the rifle back and whipped it around in an arc that sent the stock into the throat of a third screaming German, crushing the neck and silencing his cries.

Numbers four and five were running. The Kurgan sighted and fired at each in quick succession, dropping them.

Over a pile of rubble, an SS officer strode up. He drew an elegant-looking saber, with a basket hilt trimmed in gold and gemstones, and saluted. Saluted! "I am Victor Kruger, you ugly barbarian! Now, tell me your name and draw your sword! Bow to the master race!"

The Kurgan laughed. "Oh, you poor, feeble youngling. I have no name, but your mentor should have told you about me. They call me the Kurgan. Do they not speak of me in terror, when they meet on Holy Ground and talk of things that should not be?"

The puny little German was practically pissing himself as the Kurgan's Power filled the air, unfolded around them, brought chill winds and the distant promise of lightning and thunder. The German lost his fine fencer's posture and the point of his sword was trembling.

"Still, it is a trial, to be nameless. I think, when I crush in your skull, that I shall take yours!" The Kurgan roared. Thunder filled his body, and he charged at the blue-eyed blond. The earth shook with his footsteps, the world slowed down around himself as he channeled power into speed, covering ground like a lightning bolt. Halfway to the German, he scooped up one of the dead soldiers' entrenching tools, then he was in close, and whipped it around to parry Kruger's panicked thrust.

Kruger was still gawking at the Kurgan's speed, was in the middle of saying something. The Kurgan sneered as he stepped to his right at an angle, pivoted on his right foot and spun, putting all his momentum and body weight into a straight-armed, two-handed swing. The shovel-blade stove in Kruger's skull.

The Nazi's body did not seem to know what to do as it stumbled about, sword swinging clumsily. At last, he fell, twitching, convulsing.

The Kurgan smiled. He had learned much in the centuries. Perhaps he could not kill other immortals any longer for fear of bringing the Game ever closer to the time of the Gathering, but that did not mean he had to stop taking their powers for himself.

He hoisted Kruger up into the air, holding the limp body up by the throat. The Kurgan pulled. Blue sparks shot out of Victor Kruger's mouth, out of his eyes, and the Kurgan drank it in, laughing.

"Be glad, little thing! Live your life over with another name!"

It started to rain.

When the German was little more than a husk, the Kurgan threw him to one side. He had most of Kruger's memories and strength now. Just a brat, fought and died and was reborn immortal in Hitler's very foxhole back in World War I. Took the heads of a Pole and a Frenchman since then. Hardly worth the effort.

The German would eventually recover, though he would never regain the memories that the Kurgan had taken from him. He would wake up in a field hospital reduced to a blinking, gawking amnesiac, a vegetable, and have to relearn how to walk, how to speak, how to eat, how to fight, how to be.

Meanwhile, the Kurgan had fighting to enjoy. For now, he would stay in Stalingrad, sensing the storm of death gathering around the location. He would kill and kill, until his thirst was slaked. More than a few of his kills would be accredited to the Russian snipers of that era who would become legends.

And when he at last tired of killing Germans, and the Russians started to counter-attack, he recognized that the German advance was broken. He killed a Russian tank commander for good measure, and stole a T-34, just to participate in the Battle at Kursk.

And then he had enough for a time, and vanished once more, out of sight and out of the records of the Watchers, though rumors placed him heading for the West. They say that a man calling himself Victor Kruger got on a ship for Argentina, at a time when the real Kruger, who would never remember his name, was still learning to wipe his own ass.

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	3. Chapter 3: A Trifling Plaything

"Tales of the Kurgan"

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Disclaimer: I don't own Highlander. Also, anything other than the first movie and the first season of the TV series left a bad taste in my mouth, so no aliens, no Richie becoming an Immortal, etc. There will be crossovers. This is a whim-driven project in-between sessions of getting rejection letters for my original books, so if you hassle me for updates, know that I don't give a crap. I am also throwing in my own interpretations for the magic of immortals.

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He tasted the air as he stepped out of the airport. He always had loved Japan. Its anachronisms. Its endless hunger for the new clashing with its need to hold on to the old. It was all so dysfunctional, and for all the facade of clean, shiny order, it cast a deep shadow where he could have his fun, while still enjoying the luxuries of the world above.

"This way, sir." Small men in sharp black uniforms bowed to him as they held the door to the limo.

He wanted to laugh. Despite their prim, proper etiquette, they could not hide their confusion at the sight of him. He could taste dismay in the air, and fear. For a moment, he thought of killing them and driving the long black stretch car through Tokyo, getting himself chased after until it all ended in a fiery crash into some unfortunate family's home somewhere. But no, he was still sated from the activities that lead to his current fortune.

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Ever since the failed wedding, Akane would say that things were strange. Ranma walked on eggshells around her, and for the rest of her friends, spared of the burden of knowing what had really happened in China, they thought she had just been on another exciting adventure. How could she tell them of what it was really like?

Her feelings were changing too. And she did not understand. She supposed Ranma did not either, which is why he was off for the weekend on another training trip. He was planning a punitive strike against the other kids, for letting it all get out of hand during the wedding, for endangering his mother. And perhaps a small part of Akane beat a little bit faster at the thought that he'd been worried about her getting hurt too.

A knock on her door, and she was surprised, looking down at Happosai, who had his arms folded across his chest and was looking at her very, very somberly. He was wearing a white gi, with black hakama.

"What do you want you - "

"I should have been more careful," he said, silencing her with the gravity of his look. "I thought the boy was better than that. Well, it can't be helped. It's time."

"Time? For what?"

"Put on a gi. Then, we go to the dojo. The finest of my old students will... evaluate you."

"I don't understand."

"You've always hated how all the other fighters around the boy are beyond you. Well, this is your chance to go beyond them. If you choose, this man can make you a creature that can destroy mountains, entire countries, call down lightning and doom. If you don't train with him... well, sooner or later, you will be killed."

"Killed!"

"It's already happened once, hasn't it? Everything's different now. The battles to come are no longer the games of boys and girls trying to see who'll come out on top, but fights over life and death."

It made her cold to remember it. The chill as the heat left her body. The darkness as one long breathless moment came after the other. And when she was awake again, breathing again, the world was brighter, every breath was sweeter, every touch...

"We'll be waiting in the dojo."

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She took a deep breath before stepping in. Her heart was pounding. Her skin itched against her gi. She felt nauseous. What was happening to her?

There was a giant standing next to Happosai. But it was more than his physical size. There was a darkness to him that swallowed up the light. He was larger than he seemed. Denser. More real. Colors faded around him. And for all that he looked like some street punk, with his leather clothes studded with polished steel spikes, the way he held himself... He looked like he could have been anywhere between twenty and forty, but he _felt_ unutterably old, the same feelings she got around Happosai and Cologne.

His face was odd too. Caucasian in skin tone, but there was something mixed in his brutish, angular features.

And of course, there was the impossible scar that went around the front of his neck.

Akane was trembling. She clenched her fists and squared her shoulders. She was afraid, and she hated being afraid, so she focused on the anger.

"Hrmm. She's terribly small, old conqueror," the voice that rumbled out was deep, like the ocean, like black pools in the forest at the bottom of which lay monsters of old. What was strange was his speech - grammatically perfect Japanese, formal, and with a hint of the archaic. It was completely at odds with his appearance.

"Everyone is terribly small when you look at them. I'm terribly small too, and didn't you learn your best tricks from me?"

"Hrrmm. True enough. Greetings, Tendo Akane." He bowed, but it was a bit of mockery - he was so tall he was still looking down at her.

She wanted to be angrier, to fume and demand respect, but she swallowed instead, and bowed too. "Um. Greetings."

"Now then. Let's see if you're worth anything."

She caught a widening of Happosai's eyes. He was nervous.

"Ah, Victor. I would request that you not - "

"Yes, yes," the stone-like face twitched, impatient, "I won't break one of yours and the witch's precious seedlings unless she agrees to be my student. And I won't get this pretty little dance hall all bloody and dirty." He waved her toward himself. "Tendo. If you are able to walk the distance between us and stand there," he pointed at a spot two feet away from himself, "and look me in the eye, I will be willing to teach you."

"That's it?"

Then he grinned. And then _something_ unfolded out of him. It was ki. But not like the stuff that charged the air whenever Akane got caught up in one of Ranma's fights... This was the buzzing, clinging foulness of a charnel house, the sour smell of voided guts, the sounds of bones breaking, and worse things. She could barely look at him. Something primal at the back of her brain told her to run, told her she was looking at death. And whatever he was doing, it was still getting worse. Why was she doing this anyway? She knew nothing about what was going on.

But she had always wanted to be taken seriously, since finding out how much better Ranma was, how much farther she had to go. And the way Happosai talked... yes, she was afraid of getting caught again, when there was no one to protect her.

She took one step forward, and then another. Ten feet away and she had to stop. It was like her body was being squeezed, like she was swimming downwards against steadily increasing pressure. It was getting harder to breathe. Like she was being compressed, like her lungs were being crushed. Her guts were twisting inside of herself. And her head ached.

It was like back in China again. Like dying, sinking into the clinging waters.

It was terrifying. And that made her angry.

Akane was sobbing with the effort, but she was snarling too, and she swung her arms, pounded her thighs. Move. Move! And her legs moved again.

Now, there, she could see his feet. Now she just had to look up... But she was afraid, so afraid! She was shaking. She bit her lip hard, hard, pressed her nails into her palms enough to draw blood. Her vision blurred.

Just as her knees quit on her, and she started to fall, she flung her head back on her neck, and managed, for just an instant, to look him in the eyes. The intensity of what he was doing shot up ten times and she blacked out, screaming. She saw, for just a moment, the sight and smell and taste of countless fields of slaughter, crows pecking at bodies, so many dead that a blood mist in the air caked on the skin.

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"Hrmm, hrmm. Not too bad." There was that horrible, toothy smile.

"Will you do it?"

He laughed that hideous laugh. Happosai was one of the few left remaining that did not truly fear the Kurgan, but the sheer madness that welled up and filled the air around for miles whenever the Kurgan let himself go battered at his sanity. He had thought he would never meet another who enjoyed blood, guts and violence as much as himself, until he'd met the Kurgan on the grassy plains ages ago.

"It is as you wrote to me. She's like me. Fear and fury. I can see why the Witch did not choose her. Old Baba Yaga, she prefers the chilly ones with their proper technique and prissy emphasis on skills, and this one is fire and berserk and hatred. But can you really stand it, giving me one of your precious ones? You know what I'll do to her. I have never trained another before, and you know what I am."

Happosai nodded. "You are a monster. If she can survive you, she'll survive anything, and that's good enough."

"Even if she comes back a monster too?"

Now it was Happosai's turn to laugh. It was an old, tired sound. "I taught you, didn't I? I knew what you were from our mutual friend the Bedouin, even before we met on the field of battle."

The Kurgan tilted his head. "Why don't you train her yourself?"

"Ah, Kurgan. You know I'm too soft on kids. It's why my Empire fell. I was just not cruel enough to teach them the necessary viciousness."

"I always wondered why you gave up the throne, pretended to die from a riding accident of all things. You could have ruled forever. They still say your name with reverence and fear, in your homeland."

They sat at a table and looked out over the little Tendo garden. Sipping tea. The Kurgan looked ridiculous there, too large for everything, the cup a tiny shotglass in his big paw. A twitch in the Quickening sent the birds flying.

"She's awake. Interesting, she's a little stronger already."

Akane stumbled up to them, still unsteady on her feet. "I passed, didn't I? I know it!"

"Do you want to be strong, little girl?"

"I want to be strong!"

The Kurgan nodded, pleased. She was terrified but she was still flinging herself against the storm. "Then we'll be going on a trip together, you and I."

"I... need to pack... and there's school and, my family, got to say goodbye, let them - "

"Worry not about material things, they are beneath you. And your family is now in your past." He stood and started walking. "It was nice seeing you, old conqueror. I'll try not to break her too badly."

She staggered after him, and Happosai took a long, slow puff on his pipe, shaking his head. "No, Kurgan," he murmured to himself. "No need to spare my sensibilities. I chose you for her because you'll break her into little pieces. I just hope you'll be bothered to put most of her back together."

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	4. Chapter 4: First Lesson

"Tales of the Kurgan"

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Disclaimer: I don't own Highlander.

Going deeper into the first crossover now, and readers that are still with me in this story should know there's a reason it's M.

To give you some idea, I think of the Kurgan rather similarly to the way Kali-Red portrayed Riddick in her very awesome "Persephone and Hades." The Kurgan is not going to be cleaned up and hero-ized in this story. He is a very, very, very bad man.

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Akane's head was still spinning, and they were almost at the airport. The rich leather of the limo was a foreign sensation against her hands. The car smelled like it was worth more than her house.

And she still knew nothing about this giant who had taken her for an apprentice. She recalled that Happosai called him Victor, and that was all. What was she doing?

"Ah! I don't have my passport - "

He snorted, and replied "You are leaving your old life behind, little bird. Until your training is over or you are dead, I am responsible for you."

In the confined space of the car, the rumble of his voice seemed to shake her bones. His size too was much more intimidating. His hulking presence filled the air. She felt claustrophobic just being next to him. His arm looked as thick around as her waist, but it did not seem disproportionate on his giant's frame. His bulk looked lean, functional, and dangerous.

They drove past the ramp leading to the departure area, and through a winding series of turns that left Akane turned around and confused. At the end of it, a man in a uniform opened a gate for them. When the car stopped, they were next to a small jet of a design she did not recognize.

"You own a private jet?" she was stunned.

"With a long life comes many chances at wealth. I have gained fortunes and lost fortunes. I have been a slave, and I have been a king."

"You... you don't look nearly as old as Master Happosai, or Cologne."

He laughed. It was a startling, violent sound. "They are actually younger than I. I sought out the old conqueror when I quit the Game, about a couple hundred years after his chosen heirs fucked up his Empire. I needed other tricks than a sword that doesn't break. I am power! But I am not a creator of things, just a destroyer."

He climbed up the steps, not bothering to wait for her.

She stood at the foot of the steps. In the distance, jumbo jets were taking off. On the wind, she could taste jet fuel and asphalt, and farther away than that, the smell of the sea, and the sound of gulls crying.

The Game, he said. There was still so much she did not know... and now, here was a plane to who knew where. She was afraid. A part of her wanted Ranma to just show up and take her back home. She clenched her fists and focused. This had been her choice. This was her story, not Ranma's. She refused to continue being the damsel in distress.

That girl had died.

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The passenger area was staffed by one woman that she could see. She was a tall Caucasian, absurdly beautiful, with long legs and a curvy figure shown to advantage by a tight black miniskirt, and a snug gray vest with a cream-hued blouse of silk. Her hair was like gold, and she smelled like money.

"Where is, um," Akane faltered. "Where's Victor?"

"I am Natasya." The blond smiled at her. "Master Kruger is in the rear cabin. You must not disturb him for the duration of the flight. He... would not be pleased. This cabin is yours, and I am to attend to whatever you require. Would you like a glass of wine, or juice? Please, don't sit there, darling - that little thing is for me. Take the other seat - it can recline completely flat, and if you wish to watch any particular movie or play video games, the control panel is here."

Akane was dizzy as she buckled herself in. It was all happening so fast. There was a glass of champagne in her hand, and she was sipping from it because she felt she had to or scream. Her seat could be concealed fully by a curtain if she desired privacy. There was even a shower between the front and rear cabins. This was an experience she had nothing to compare to.

The engines were spinning up with that characteristic whine, and here she was, still barefoot in her gi!

Natasya continued to familiarize her with the features present on the plane even as it took off. Also, she told Akane that a bag had been prepared for her in the closet next to the shower.

"In it, you will find pajamas, some underwear, a formal dress and shoes, and two sets of clothes for hiking, and boots. There are papers for an Anna Tenryu, which will be your identity for a time."

How did they prepare this so quickly? Happosai must have been making plans long before this... Or perhaps, Akane thought, she ought to consider the power of money, which Victor seemed to possess in fantastic abundance.

"Also, your weapons are in the silver hard-shell stroller."

Akane blinked. "Um. Weapons?"

The blond's smile was lovely and serene. Her blue eyes were guileless and open, like looking into the pale sky drifting by her window.

"Yes. There is a Desert Eagle .50, with a box of copper jacketed hollow-point rounds, and a cleaning kit. There is also a gladius, which Master Kruger assures me is authentic and of exquisite quality and workmanship, and a cleaning kit for that."

"Uh. I don't - I think there must be a misunderstanding, I'm a martial artist, and - "

"No, no. The Master never misunderstands. The gladius is an excellent weapon for beginners. It is tough and well-balanced, and does not require the same finesse as more modern blade designs. As for the gun, well... the people you are in most danger from can only be slowed down by the most powerful of firearms."

Akane's stomach wanted to sink past the floor. What had she gotten herself into? She had not imagined the bulge in the bubbly blond's vest after all - that was a gun. And a more subtle shape on the woman's hip suggested the presence of a knife under her skirt.

It would just figure that Happosai was handing her off to a drug-lord of some sort to learn how to fight.

"Ah, there is the light. We are leveling off. You may safely walk about if you like. Shall I get you slippers? Would you like a light meal? It is a very long flight indeed..."

"Um. Uh. Where are we flying to?"

"There will be a few stops for refueling, and also because the Master needs to attend to a brief business meeting at the airport in the Ukraine. Afterward, we will be proceeding to a little town in Siberia."

Siberia! Akane groaned.

"Oh, don't be alarmed! Winter is not for a while yet, and it is a very beautiful land, you know. It's quite a big place! There are forests and mountains, and plains and lakes. There are tigers and bears and leopards, lovely creatures. Also, well, when the time comes, the cold will toughen you up!" Natasya flexed her right arm playfully, and patted her bicep.

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Akane showered and changed, and whiled away the hours with movies without really paying attention to them. The pajamas were black silk trimmed with crimson, and fit perfectly. The food was excellent, except for the caviar, which Akane decided was a lot better looking than it tasted. She tried napping but was too keyed up.

She considered going through the manual of the Desert Eagle and familiarizing herself with it, but was too intimidated by the prospect of screwing up somehow and shooting a hole through the side of the plane.

By the time sleep came for her, she was disoriented and exhausted.

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"Uhnn-huh?"

The engines were quiet. They were on the ground. It was cold! She huddled deeper into her blankets, and considered asking for more as she yawned.

"You're awake. I'll fix something for you as soon as we're in the air."

"Is this where Mister Kruger is meeting somebody?"

"They're meeting right now - "

Crack! Crack!

"What the Hell is that?"

"It's nothing," Natasya said. "No, Ms. Tendo. I advise you against that..."

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"Y-you can't do this to me, Victor, I made you a billion, I - "

It was like the squirming resistance of gnats. The Kurgan shot him too. He relished the terror in the air. It was ambrosia. It was the real breakfast of champions.

And look at that. The precious was screeching as she flew down the steps. She was yelling out for him to stop, stop, stop!

There was still that last fool making a run for it. The Kurgan raised his arm and sighted down it. The girl was a demented rabbit, punching and kicking him, but he would not be moved. She could not even shift his aim. For all the stone-shattering power she focused into her blows, they were droplets of rain striking the ocean.

"Bye-bye, Lennie," he rumbled. Russian was an excellent language to rumble in. He loved the sound of his voice in it. There was a duality and complexity to the sound that was richer than all the guttural syllables of German, and it was also harsher and fiercer than those pussy romance languages. "You shouldn't have sided with the idiot trying to take over my board of executives." Another crack, and another of his glorified CPAs was dead.

Now, on to the next order of business.

"Compose yourself," he said, switching to Japanese. "At once!"

She was crying now, and still hitting him. She had so far unloaded enough kinetic energy to destroy a brick wall of fair size. She was fucking ripping up the goddamned Armani he put on just for meetings like this.

The Kurgan rolled his eyes. He became the gale wind just for an instant. His hand closed around her throat and raised her up to the level of his eyes.

"Bitch, be cool," he said. It was quite a reasonable and calm tone of voice, if he did think so himself, considering she was still kicking him and crying. "I said BE COOL!" He was the earth, quaking, and he slammed her down into the tarmac hard enough to shatter the tarmac. Finally, she shut up.

But she was still glaring at him. He loved it, just as he loved the taste of her fear. He was going to enjoy their time together.

"I don't give a shit about how your previous master pampered you. Daddy spoiled you, honey. I am the oldest of the old school. You are my apprentice and I control how you eat, how you sleep, how you shit. I am the God of your universe until I let you go. And now, I think it is time to teach you the first lesson."

He pressed the smoking barrel of the gun against her temple, and finally, she went still. Well, she was still shivering, but she was not kicking him now, or clawing at his arms.

"You feel that hot, quality steel, dearie? Oh, what's the matter? Oh, of course, you can't talk with me squeezing your neck. You just nod a bit, you can do that. There you go."

Her tears. He swallowed them up in the rise of his Quickening.

"You've never been shot before."

She shook her head. Those big soft eyes were bright red now, blood vessels popping. She still could not breathe. He wondered if she realized that she did not need to, yet? Well, he would take the time to show her that she could not drown. Later. For now, the lesson of opportunity.

"Gooooood." The Kurgan pulled the pistol away, leaned down, and stretched out his long, long tongue. He licked her from her chin up to her temple, and laughed when she jerked away. Then he put the gun back to her head. "Then this should be a treat for you."

He laughed and laughed, and blasted her open from temple to temple.

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	5. Chapter 5: The Fine Art of Cruelty

"Tales of the Kurgan"

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Disclaimer: I don't own Highlander. Also, anything other than the first movie and the first season of the TV series left a bad taste in my mouth, so no aliens, no Richie becoming an Immortal, etc.

So, to recap - I'm ignoring most of the TV series, and I'm ignoring the books. There's just too much junk in there, and I'd rather put in my own history for the Kurgan. I especially dislike how the Kurgan was supposed to have lost to MacLeod before the Gathering and to Ramirez before their encounter in Scotland.

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She lay atop a mountain. She woke to the rain pouring down her face. Lightning flashing so close she felt that if she extended her arm up, it would smite her.

She had lost track of the number of times that the Kurgan had killed her.

"Is it sinking in yet, little bird?" his whisper carried despite the wind lashing the peaks, despite the thunder echoing across the plains below them.

Akane rolled onto her knees, and slowly, carefully got back to her feet. It would be far too easy to slip and fall, and if she died yet again from the drop off the mountain, he would kill her another time for good measure for such carelessness.

Hopelessly, she raised her gladius, and waited for his inevitable, unstoppable charge.

The training was more brutal than anything she could imagine. Worse than the very worst, she was certain, that Ranma had been put through. Because she would always be healed the next day or sooner, the Kurgan held very little back. He broke her hands. He shattered her spine. He snatched a hand through her belly and led her on a bloody, screeching chase down the mountain, using her guts like a leash. Only the final death did he spare her, only beheading.

He taught her guns, and taught her blades. He taught her to harness her life force and pound down the will of lesser creatures, mortals and animals. He taught her that, channeled into a blade, it made the sword indestructible as long as her will might last, and demonstrated it by demolishing a three storey building with his sword. He taught her that it could be channeled into the bullets in a magazine, and when these are fired, those little bits of metal blasted holes as though they were cannonballs. He taught her to focus it into her flesh to become faster and stronger and tougher, and into her senses to raise her awareness and read an opponent's moves. He even taught her how to steal the life force from another. Of course, everything he taught her, he could himself do better from the sheer amount of power he had amassed over the millenia.

And he taught her to cheat. "Nearly every immortal that comes for you will be your elder, will have more power and more experience. While they are doing their fancy sword-dancing and whipping it around, you shoot them in the gut. I am not clever because I don't need to be. You? You're nothing. A worm. Best you be clever."

She had been scandalized, of course. What was the point of learning the sword and hand-to-hand if she was to resort to a gun most of the time?

"I only observe the rule of Holy Ground, for there has been Holy Ground since men first stepped forth from Africa. The other rules," he told her, "are shit. Use guns! Use vehicles! The first immortals fought each other with clubs and stone axes, did that stop us from using swords when swords were created? Why should we not use guns! When you are strong enough to survive without firearms, only then will you have the luxury of choosing to fight with blade or fists. Survival above all, above honor and dignity and pride, this is why your Khan gave you to me to teach."

He was only ever angry at her when she would quit. That only happened twice, early on.

On a day she just hurt too much to move, when she rebelled and wanted only to sleep, he responded by dislocating each of her limbs, and raping her until she was too hoarse to speak.

One last, foolish moment, a month later, she tried to run. He hunted her down like an animal, tracking her across the steppes. And when she could run no longer, hobbled by arrows in her back and leg, he stuck burning hot skewers through her breasts and tore them bloody, and impaled her with a spear until it punched through her guts and came out her mouth.

So she did not quit anymore, and she did not try to run anymore. She did as she was told, however much she hated or feared or sobbed.

More than once, she thought she went insane. But he would reach into her head with his Quickening and drag her, kicking and screaming, out of the shelter of madness

He pounded her until she broke. On days when she was too numb to terrorize, he would shove his Quickening at her until she could resist nothing, and then he would cram her brain with language lessons and history and politics. "Just for a change of pace," he'd rumble.

Once, she thought she was inured to such things as mundane torture and rape, and had made the mistake of saying, "You can't hurt me anymore."

So he tied her down and gave her to first his dogs, and then to his horse, to fuck. It set her soul to screaming. That was the last time she called out for Ranma to save her, begging and crying, for anyone, for anyone to make it stop. It was also the last time she thought of that fuzzy image, that handsome boy she wished she had been brave enough to give herself to.

There was no one to help her. Natasya, the villagers, his employees... they worshiped the Kurgan like a God. So deeply did he hold them in his power that if he commanded them to kill themselves, they would. He demonstrated that to Akane, once, on a young goatherder, just to show how flexible the power of the Quickening could be.

There was no end to his ingenious savagery and cruelty. "Humans," he would tell her, "are most clever of all when they have something to kill, or something to break. Nothing I've done to you is new. It has all been done before, inflicted by humans upon humans. At least for you," he'd chuckle darkly, "it is also educational."

Eventually she came to accept that this was simply how things were. When the Kurgan saw that, he tortured her less frequently, reserving it for occasions when he felt she was getting bored.

That was when he shifted their training more towards actual fighting skills, sword stances and strikes, dances, kata, wrestling, striking, grappling, the countless dirty tricks he learned over the ages.

He taught her tactics and strategy too, and played games of armies and spies and territories with her. Akane could never predict when he would be slow and patient and gentle with her, and when he might turn mad and kill her.

"Sun Tzu was a great leader not because he could fight great. He was great because he was damned smart, and a consciensceless cheater. He used everything at his disposal to defeat his enemies, without a care for what is fair or honorable."

"Did you meet him?" Akane asked.

"I was an opposing general during the Spring and Autumn period." The Kurgan smiled fondly. "We had numbers and supplies and he crushed us, utterly. It is too bad he was only a mortal."

He had other stories too. He talked of meeting a carpenter in Galilee, and how that man's message was usurped by his own following. He spoke gleefully of the fall of Rome. He told her about her former school's founder when Happosai ruled the largest Empire in the world. He showed her one of his paintings of the bodies lining the streets during the Black Death in Europe.

The months passed. Autumn became winter. Winter turned to spring. The seasons turned to years, and he refined the pieces of her he could not break in the flame of his training until she was razor-shape and lean and hard.

Within ten years, she learned how to harness her darkness the way he could. The rage and fury, the fear and terror, the grief for distant things she could not remember losing, the memory of every pain and agony and indignity, all these things were the source of her strength.

At last, he told her, "You are ready."

"Ready for what?"

"To kill."

Her graduation test was to accompany him to a distant land called Roanapur, where a certain man was in hiding.

"I... don't want to kill anybody. I just want to live."

The Kurgan smiled at her. She was a fine thing, a true product of his greatness. Even as she looked at him in terror, her hands were steady, and close to her weapons, and she was looking him in the eye.

"If you don't kill him, I will, and your time with me goes on, and on. Kill him, and you are free of me. You can go home, little bird, if you want to."

Akane's eyes slowly, slowly widened. "I'll do it."

"Your prey is a naive little thing named Rock. Okajima Rokuro."

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	6. Chapter 6: You Can't Go Home Again

"Tales of the Kurgan"

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Disclaimer: I don't own Highlander.

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"So. We are here, my former apprentice."

Indeed they were. Akane could feel that they were, even with her eyes closed.

There was the sun's beacon, brightly burning, of the Kurgan's old master nearby. Not that much farther away, she sensed the cold black ice of the Witch. Also, there were the half-lit candle-flames of _potentials_ scattered throughout the city.

The Kurgan had never explained what the plans of the Happosai and Cologne were, only hinted that they had spent a long time carefully manipulating events to gather _potentials_ together in one place where they could watch them.

Akane had been one of them. Only, she had died early. They had depended too much on Ranma to maintain the status quo.

Since then, the Kurgan had told her, Nerima had become a fortress. Mundane mortals might never realize how many assassins-for-hire now patrolled the area, keeping out undesirables like supernatural monsters and the majority of immortals. They also kept out gangsters and drug dealers, except for the ones under Happosai's thumb.

She opened her eyes, and while nothing around her had changed, she herself was fundamentally different, and with different eyes, it was all both familiar and strange.

The sun was warm. The air was gentle. The streets were clean and straight. The cars shiny and new. The walls of the various family compounds and apartment buildings and neighborhood stores were washed clean and bright. The people walked around openly, without fear.

"So they're watching us now? And just how did the three of you become friends anyway?" she wondered out loud. "Also... why haven't they brought the potentials to their first deaths yet?"

The Kurgan laughed. "You should ask those two schemers yourself."

She supposed that she would. Or not. Maybe, despite her growth, she was still too used to seeing in mortal terms. For immortals, only a drop of time had passed. Anyway, she sensed that those _potentials_ were still under thirty... Time yet for them to reach their natural prime. The way she had never had the chance to.

Akane opened her eyes. The limo was a different one from the one she had left in. It was loaded with electronics, for one thing, with small computers for amusement, LCD screens, disc players, a video game console. She was unmoved now, by material spoils, though she also had a greater appreciation for quality, and beauty of form and function. Indeed, he had taught her a lot, in their time together.

He wore a suit today. Exquisitely tailored, granite and basalt, a tie that was a swathe of blood down his cream shirt. His hair was cut and slicked back.

It was about as ridiculous as putting a suit on a bear. No. On a storm.

"So is this goodbye, Master?"

He tilted his head, amused. "I will be here for a while yet, little bird. I wish to see you take to your wings on your own. And of course, I have colleagues to confer with."

Akane tried to penetrate his sardonic expression. His power was too dense for her to probe, but he sometimes let fragments of ideas and emotions surface. She could never tell when that happened by accident and when he let it happen.

"Please don't destroy the neighborhood."

"You wound me."

"You're planning to fight them."

"I am planning to spar with them."

"Your idea of sparring is - "

His eyes flashed. The sun outside was darkened by a blanket of clouds. "I have freed you, youngling, but if you choose to be impudent with me," his ghastly smile crept wider, "I can still choose to teach you further." His hand cupped her cheek.

Under the stone stillness, the grim armor that was her face, she shuddered. "Of course."

They sat there, in the limo, at the corner of two streets crossing, for hours yet, in silence. She watched the people going to and fro along the street, especially those students going in and out through the gates of her home. And he watched her watching, with a patience she knew was not innate for him, but which he had learned over the thousand year transition towards his current, supposedly 'better' self.

"I guess I will see you around."

"Oh yes. You will."

The car drove off and left her standing on the curb.

She hefted her duffel bag, and took a deep, deep breath. As she did so, she pressed down on her Quickening, pushed it, compressed it below the ebb and flow of her blood, beyond the shell of her bones, through the shadow of the primitive reptilian part of the brain. She was as close to mortal as she could get.

Then she walked past the open gates, towards the dojo. She could hear the sounds of students yelling in sync as they stepped through their kata, bare feet stamping against the floorboards.

Akane could hear his voice, and in her heart, the ashes smoldered just a little brighter.

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He hated teaching the brats. His heart just was not in it. None of them had any real talent or devotion - more than half of them were only there because their parents were forcing them into it. Even his two oldest students, college kids whom he paid as assistant instructors to help him in class, were not martial arts material.

Still, he had to keep paying the bills. And despite his surly disposition, he was good at this. Even if he had to dumb down his methods and teach it through patterns that would have gotten him killed as a kid.

He walked them through the last sequence of punches, blocks, kicks and stances, and sighed. At least now they could get to the marginally interesting part of the class where he had his better students spar.

And then he felt someone step onto the dojo's floorboards. Not one of his students at all.

He turned, and for a long time that had his assistants whispering and asking if he was alright, he was still and silent, trying to understand what he was seeing.

There was a girl. She was just a teenager. She wore a black tank top and olive cargo shorts. Her feet were bare, but he could see the hiking boots next to the immense black bag left outside. Her black hair was cropped so very short, short as a boy's. The muscles on her tanned, bare legs and arms stood out, barely any fat over them. She looked strong, but also excessively lean, worn, like a professional combat athlete during the draining period of dehydration and starvation to cut weight before a match. But despite the hair, and despite her slimmer form, she looked impossibly the same.

Only her eyes were different. Older. Hollow.

"Akane?"

A little of the old spark returned to her eyes. Just a little bit. She exhaled, and for just a moment, he felt a rush of power sweep out from her, rippling through the air, but she inhaled and smiled, and it was gone, as though he had imagined it.

"Um. Hi? Sorry for, you know. Disrupting your class. I was in town, and I thought, well, I might visit."

"Haru, Alice, you two supervise the sparring. I'll, ah, be right back."

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Ranma was coming over to embrace her. She could feel it. She did not need the Quickening to read his emotions. He wore them on his face. There was longing, and disbelief. He looked so much bigger now, taller, broader, heavier. His hands were larger and when he had been guiding the kids through their moves, they had looked so very gentle. He looked beautiful. Perfect.

Ten steps. Five steps.

If she did not do something soon, he would be on her and holding her and her heart would break.

So when he got close enough, Akane plastered on her best grin from the age before she was a murderer, and shoved him back with a palm to his chest.

"Ah, ah. Your class is almost done, right? What say you and me show them how it's done?"

The warmth on his face faded, and a little of the anger he had been hiding rose up. "Wha - "

"I just want to see if you've gotten slow since taking over Daddy's spot."

What the heck was she doing? This was going to be a disaster...

Twenty miles away, she felt her master explode into prominence. He was tangling with the Conqueror and the Witch, and having a grand time, laughing madly. Even at that distance, he was laughing at her. Because he knew, she felt that he knew, that secret hope she had kept under all the darkness and filth he had covered her in.

Ranma was not one of the _potentials _that Happosai and Cologne were collecting. He never had been... She was such an idiot... She had been so sure...

Akane could just imagine the Kurgan's smirk, the mocking lightness of his voice. _You really thought you could come back home, outlive whichever bitch he chose while you were gone, and then pick up where you left off?_

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The insufferable little - all this time, and that was how it was going to be? He quieted his heart, and stilled his emotions. He was cold. He was Ice.

"Okay. That's not a bad idea, might give the brats a little inspiration." He waved at his assistants. "Clear the floor. Students, stick to the walls."

He ignored their puzzled looks, their murmured words. Mostly, they asked the same thing. Who was she? Ranma wanted to know the same thing.

"We should agree on some rules," he said.

Akane shrugged. She stood on tiptoe, arched her back, arms stretched up, and all along her hard, chiseled form, joints popped and released. "Isn't the school still anything goes?"

Oh she was so going to get it. He wasn't the same chauvinistic brat from when they were kids. Kids... How could she look so young?

"Okay then. But if you damage the dojo or - "

"Don't worry. It won't get out of hand." The confidence in her was new. And disturbing. It was not like the self-assurance he had gained through countless matches and fights. There was something dark in her eyes.

She charged him first, and Ranma frowned. Was that it? Surely not. Her form was, if anything, sloppier than before. Her kicks and punches missed him by miles. He danced around her, and there was something familiar. They had done this before.

He flipped over her when she over-extended, and his fingers stopped just short of crashing into her spine.

They both paused there. Around them, the students were gasping. Probably faster than most of them could process.

"Is that really it, ten years?" he asked.

She trembled in place. "I don't get a lot of practice at holding back. Sorry. I'll take it up a notch. But, Ranma... you should have hit me while you could."

Akane exhaled, and loosened up... and then there was something there. Something vast, growing.

His eyes widened, and Ranma retreated yards back before he knew he was doing so. His heart was pounding. His hold on the Ice trembled with that first breath of her power. And the thing inside her was still rising.

Around them, he felt his students stumbling back, away from them both, until their backs hit the dojo's walls and doors.

If she kept going, she would destroy the dojo. Maybe kill the kids... He had to snap her out of it! Ranma leaped at her, slammed a kick full force into the side of her head. It was a blow that would have stunned Ryoga. It should have thrown Akane tumbling sideways like a ragdoll, even if she had learned some kind of body-hardening like the bakusai tenketsu, because she still had all the mass of a lightly built teenage girl.

Instead, her head just tilted slightly. Ranma felt all of the ki he had put into his kick splash against her, not absorbed or deflected, just... breaking up against something... more dense.

"I guess that should be enough," she said softly, almost to herself.

She turned to face him.

He was astonished at her tears. She looked fragile and tired, and yet was somehow more beautiful and pure than anything he had ever seen.

"I really wish you'd saved me, when there was still time," she said.

Then she charged him again, and this time, it was brutal.

Her punches were as strong as the strongest he had faced. And she was impossibly tough. Tougher than Ryouga. She took his combos on purpose just so she could land single blows on him, and nothing he was doing was hurting her.

He broke three of her ribs when he poured a fifth of his ki into a speed-barrage of his fists and feet, and she just took it, and delivered a punch to his side that almost put him on the floor.

Akane paused, stretched a little bit from side to side, and Ranma swore he could sense her power putting her ribs back in place, fusing the pieces instantly.

Only all the experience he had fighting Herb and Saffron, only his slight edge in speed and significant edge in technique kept him from going down.

He tried to back her off with a jab and straight to her face, a feint to get him enough space to blast her with a ki-ball, delivered faster than the eye could see. She took both blows head on, smiled bloodily as she got into his space, and delivered a knee that launched him up against the ceiling, all the air blasted out of his lungs.

Ranma turned in the air, kicked off one of the roof's support beams, and spun once more, delivering an axe-kick that ought to have pulverized her shoulder.

She just took it, grabbed onto his leg, and slammed him into the ground.

They had their hands on each other and Ranma knew he was in serious trouble. Grappling reduced his advantage in speed. And somehow, Akane was burning life force so fast she was stronger than him by far.

Minute after minute, he stymied her. He slid out of a heel hook, spinning, but she would not let go, so he tried pulling her left into an arm-bar. She dislocated her own elbow to get free, spun on top of him, and was wrapping her leg around his neck for a triangle. Her arm was already fixed by the time he wriggled loose, and then they were in North-South position.

Once, he would have been embarrassed to the point of paralysis. This time, he was glad to have kept his head and bucked his hips to get some space, because he heard her jaws actually snap shut just short of his crotch. She planted her hands on either side of him and kicked off the ground, flipping her body up, then slammed her knees down at him. He blocked it and felt his arms creak even with the reinforcing energy he put into them.

She kicked up to try it again, and in that brief moment, Ranma blasted her with a half-formed ki-sphere to knock her away. Even as her smoldering body lifted up, she grabbed onto his legs, and took him with her into the air.

When they landed, he was on top, but still he could not control her. For a moment he thought he had her by using his arms and the cloth of his gi in an improvised choke but she jammed her fingers into his nose and hooked his head hard, wrenching him out of proper position. His eyes stung and teared up from that, and he did not feel the slightest bit better when his retaliatory shot to her ear accomplished, well, nothing.

They scrambled and tumbled across the floor, sometimes elbowing each other or kneeing, neither able to really take advantage.

Once, he got her in a guillotine, right arm tight around her neck, the other hooked around his wrist to increase the pressure, cutting off the flow of blood and oxygen... and Akane just kept going, was pounding his gut and ribs with punch after punch. It was like she did not need air!

His eyes watered and released her when she kneed him right in the crotch, and they were back again in a writhing, wriggling battle on the floor.

At the rate she was flaming ki, she should have been exhausted and helpless, but she just kept going and going.

It felt like he was wrestling with someone with the raw physical strength of Taro's monster form, and the savage technique and endless energy reserves of Herb and Saffron.

Despite her sloppy waste of energy, he was tiring faster.

Akane was... beating him.

It was desperation time. While his hands where still on her arms, pulling and pushing hard to gain advantage, and their legs bashed each other or twined and twisted, he focused energy to his hands, warping the air.

A burst of pressure exploded between them, starting at Ranma's hands. It flung Akane away again. She still had a tight grip on his sleeves, but this time, Ranma used a variant of the old pervert's cloth-stealing technique to shuck off the torn remnants of his gi top to get loose.

Now they were both back on their feet again, and circling, slowly.

He had expended three-quarters of his energy, had numerous minor bruises scattered around his body and a few bad ones at his ribs, and Akane was moving around much as she had when she had pulled out that freaky ki. She was gliding from side to side, shifting her weight, hands low...

He could not let her get him back onto the ground.

The more damage he had inflicted on her, the faster she had seemed to heal. She was putting out a third again as much life force as she had when the fight had turned serious. In fact, the raw waste radiating out of her was not just a waste after all - it was sapping his own aura, destabilizing his Ice and focus. It buffeted his psyche, with phantom sensations of pain, anguish, anger.

He was aware that the effects on his students were much worse. All of them had already fled to the garden, to watch from a safer distance.

He doubted he had the control left to try to vanish from Akane's sight, not with all her energy saturating the air. He pondered attempting a spiral manipulation of it to draw it in and blast it back at her, a positive-negative version of the Amazons' ki counter-blast, but even if he could, the resulting explosion would total the dojo. He could try Happosai's energy absorption, but the thought of taking in that foulness was profoundly disturbing.

Now what?

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Akane wondered what to do. If she wished, she could defeat Ranma without drawing on any more of the power she'd stolen in Roanapur. If she did draw on all her power, she could actually beat him instantly. It would probably kill him though.

She knew what her master would do... So Akane wondered, really, who exactly she had become?

Even before her training with that monster, Akane had not really been comfortable with her own identity, her own skin. Too much of who she was had so easily been wrapped around her feelings about Ranma, reacting to him, to the circumstances surrounding them, to all the others trapped in his web. She had thought she was full of anger and resentment before, and now what was she, after everything that the Kurgan had put her through? She had thought she was special before, when she was not, and now that she was, what did it mean? What was it for, all the suffering the Kurgan had put her through? To survive? To be a killer?

She was still afraid and angry all the time. Now, at least, she controlled them and let them give her strength, rather than being at their mercy.

The Kurgan would not hesitate. She knew this.

So she did the opposite. It was just in time too, because she felt another presence approaching, a presence that had Akane's heart in her throat.

Simultaneously, Ranma came to the same decision, and Akane nearly went limp with relief. They both pulled their energies back in, bowed to each other, and stopped.

Outside, the students clapped and cheered.

Let them be amused, she thought. She could taste Ranma's bitterness. The part of her that belonged to the Kurgan lapped it up and was pleased. The remains of her old self moaned, and wept some more. She was neither, and she was both, and she was more than the sum of it all.

"Good fight," she got out, smiling.

"Y-yeah. Good fight."

Kasumi now, ran in. She hugged Akane with a terrible tenderness that was overwhelming and unstoppable.

"I missed you so much..."

Akane's hands closed around her older sister's gently, gently. She felt the ring on the finger. All her sister's emotions poured out of her. Love. Sorrow. Guilt.

On the one hand, Kasumi had taken Ranma from her. But how could Akane resent that? It would be hard enough for her sister... whenever the old manipulators decided it was finally time, and brought Kasumi to her first death.

Would they train her themselves? Would they kill her in her sleep, stealthily, to fix her at some idealized age? Then wait until Ranma grew old and died, and the grieving widow might be more malleable?

Yet another presence. Nabiki. Dropping her bags. Entering the adjoining house. Akane could feel her too. Another candle-light in the dark.

Impossible, Akane thought. How could both her sisters also be _potentials_?

Out there, she could almost hear her master, laughing at her.

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	7. Chapter 7: Students and Teachers

"Tales of the Kurgan"

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Disclaimer: I don't own Highlander.

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Akane talked to her sisters for hours and hours. Ranma mostly watched from one corner of the room, silent, except for when Kasumi prodded him into speaking.

"So, Daddy and Mister Saotome got consulting jobs where they travel around the world? Huh."

Nabiki shrugged. "Sounds crazy, doesn't it? But their pay appears on time every month in their accounts here. Of course they have me," she rolled her eyes, "doing their taxes. I just hope whatever they're really doing isn't illegal."

"How lonely for Mrs. Saotome," Akane said.

Consulting and travel? Those were the excuses quite a number of Victor Kruger's 'special' employees used with their families. If Mr. Saotome and her father had been working for Happosai and Cologne all this time... that would explain how three immortals could be in one family. She did not want to believe it. Could her whole life really have been a lie?

"She's used to it. Anyway, she visits here every weekend. The students love her, because she always cooks up food for everybody. We, um," Kasumi paused, glancing at Ranma, "we've asked her to come live here with us. She could just rent out her home. She, um, does seem quite lonely, except for when she's here."

The conversation drifted on towards the topic of Akane's schoolmates. Some went to college. Some worked the endless grind as gray-suited salary-men. A few were married. And one or two had died, car accidents, a drug overdose. And there were the families.

"Yuka has a child? Really!" Akane murmured to herself. "I bet the kid's beautiful."

That should have been her. Her master would tell her to harness her envy, turn it to power, and take what she wanted. She could hardly kidnap Ranma and steal someone else's baby. _But you could_, she imagined her master saying. _You could even arrange it so that they did not know._

Her eyes met Kasumi's, and she winced. There was a sadness there too. Of course, Kasumi wanted children as well. Only, she would never have them... and would not understand why until her first death.

They nodded to each other, and cooperated to keep the discussion away from more painful topics.

Nabiki proudly informed Akane that she was a CPA, an attorney, and the youngest partner in an upstart firm specializing in corporate law and environmental law. She already had plans, of course, on how to parlay her steadily growing web of connections towards a future career in politics. For now, others still saw her as a silly young girl, a symbolic gesture that the company was making towards gender equality, but in just a few years, she would be ready to show her claws.

Akane smiled softly. "Give them Hell." _Of course, little bird, you wonder if she had to sleep her way up the ladder, don't you?_

"Are you alright, Akane? You keep shaking your head and closing your eyes. Headache? Was your sparring with Ranma too hard?" Kasumi turned to Ranma. "I didn't see any of it. Did you hit her too hard?"

"It's nothing." She and Ranma continued their own unspoken agreement to avoid looking at each other. "My master is way harder on me than that."

Then the idiot could not keep his mouth shut any longer. "Your master is giving you a lot of bad habits."

Oh no. She was not going there. Once, she would have blurted out the truth in as confrontational a manner as possible as a prelude to physical violence. But now, if she did that, Ranma would move mountains to try to find the Kurgan and tell him what he thought about his training. Her master would smile and boast about the things he had done to her, and down that spiraling tunnel of events lay a road of revelations and combat that would leave Ranma eating through a straw the rest of his days.

To deflect this, she asked about his own training, and Ukyo's and Shampoo's and Ryoga's too.

Despite getting older, Ranma was still quite the narcissist when it came to martial arts. That was all it took to get him talking about all his training trips, all the other masters he had met so far, and the fights he had won.

Why, why couldn't he have been a _potential _too? Maybe they could have still been together, someday... Everything, everything might have been different.

_You'd brush aside your own blood's immortality if your old lover could have it? My, my. I thought your sisters would mean so much more to you._

Okay, that was definitely coming from outside. Her master was eavesdropping, and needling her with comments at the worst times. When he sensed that she realized this, he became ever more crude and creative and cruel.

_Just think of it. Or you could simply put everyone else asleep. Use your skills to bring the boy's cock to attention, fuck it in front of your sisters. Or you could wake them up. You have enough power now. You could command them all to join you in what I think would be quite a fetching little orgy._

It would be impossible to keep up a conversation with that voice echoing in her skull. Akane did not dare to try to push him out. Whenever she had attempted it, he had only poured on more and more pressure until her mental defenses cracked, and then he would loom inside her mind, so much of his power filling her, tearing her mental space - it was just as bad as those times he would physically rape her.

She pretended to yawn, and hoped she seemed marginally convincing. Centuries of experience and other lives stolen from MacLeod and through him, the Quickenings he had taken, and none of those hyper-masculine fight-first-talk-second fools had a drop of acting talent or skill.

"Maybe sparring with Ranma took more out of me than I thought after all. I'll call a taxi - there's a hotel that's - "

Kasumi reached across the low table, closed her hands around Akane's. "I'm not letting you go so soon. You'll be staying here. We... we kept your old room like it was. It's clean and there are sheets and everything."

Akane could feel the discomfort and tension dripping off of Ranma, and taste the acid-sweet amusement on Nabiki.

Nabiki took a sip of tea, held it in her mouth, savored the fragrance for a second, and swallowed. Akane could read those surface thoughts. The temptation to make trouble for Ranma. And the wisdom and maturity of simply growing up holding her back, a soft desire to somehow see them all happy.

"There is a hotel just a bus ride away that belongs to a client of mine," Nabiki slipped in between Akane's fumbling rejections and Kasumi's insistence. "They would be happy to put up the sister of Tendo Nabiki for free."

Kasumi's voice was still smooth and velvet, but now some of the steel under it could be felt. "No. Akane belongs here."

Nabiki raised an eyebrow and shrugged at Akane.

_Hah. So she tried. And now that she tried and failed to help you, you wonder, will she be watching the rest of the evening, as you and he and she stumble through all this nauseating reluctance? You are my student! Choose what you want! Take it and damn the rest!_

"Akane, are you alright?"

She was bent over, head clutched in her hands, elbows on the table. She tried to ease her mental space open, spreading herself for the master. It would hurt less. And in a strange, shameful way, it felt pleasurable too, to be filled up with something so strong and vital. It was like sex. It was awful and dirty and she hated and ached. She wanted to snarl and lash out and scream, and she also wanted to curl up and... submit. Surrender. Her cunt was clenching, wet. "I think I'll go have a bath," she whispered. "Then I guess I'll stay here after all. I've traveled a long way..."

"Okay. I'll wake you up for dinner, alright? Then it will be your turn to tell us what you've been up to. Nobody knew what happened to you and... we've been so worried. Happosai - "

"I can guess what he said. In the end, it was my choice to go. We'll talk about it later."

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They passed around a flask of top quality vodka. It tasted pure and clean as water, but had the kick of a thunderbolt.

They were seated at the bottom of one of many craters scattered across a fenced-off lot. The air was heavy with the scent of blood and burning concrete, smoke and charred earth. All three of them had terrible wounds.

They ignored the small army outside the boundary. They were employees, low-level gunners to keep bystanders and the police away.

The Witch spoke first, "Remind me, O Khan, why did we ever think it was a good idea to teach this monster anything? He was just another idiot with a sword until we taught him our tricks and techniques."

The Kurgan laughed. "You taught me because you wanted to see what I would do with it. And did I make you proud, little mother?"

"Peace, peace," the Conqueror said, palms up. "Haven't you gotten the fighting out of your systems today? We all have bones we need to knit together properly, or we won't be walking right for the next hundred years."

The Kurgan sneered, and rose to his feet. Defiant. Proud. "Speak for yourselves. Mine are all flesh wounds!" And then he chuckled. "Granted, you got in a good one, little mother, got your little stick in through my heart." The lacerations torn across his chest and belly steamed as the edges drew together. Blood was still pouring out of him, but it was slowing. He dug around in a pit in his chest and pulled out bits of debris.

"Hmm, where did you get that one?"

"Oh, that? It's, meh, a piece of shell. German eighty-eight, World War Two."

The Conqueror shook his head. "You need a surgeon to take care of those bullets and shrapnel pieces in your body. It's no wonder you can't go through a metal detector."

The Witch took another sip of vodka, and passed it back to the Kurgan, who downed a large mouthful and laughed some more. A cheery fellow, for a bloodthirsty creature. "He has no patience for such things, do you, Mister Kruger? Perhaps you should get an MRI done. All the metal bits would rip right out of your body all at once, and there! You'd be done."

"That's not a bad idea." He stretched and flexed, and the pulse of his power was a rippling distortion through the air as it spread out like a sphere, contracted, pulsed. "Be amusing to see how those doctors would react."

They moved on to other things. They spoke of the progress of their seedlings. Their plans. Fewer and fewer of their kind remained in the Game. Their attempts to spread their own philosophy were bearing fruit after all, even if it had taken centuries. Only a few hardliners remained set against them, immortals that pursued the Prize at any cost.

Soon, it would be time to have the seedlings they had gathered bloom, as Akane had. They would grant them the first deaths, and train them, and prepare them to train others... in preparation for the dark future they all felt was coming.

"Have you nothing you wish to add, Victor?"

"Bah. I have learned my limits. I leave the planning and thinking to those that are better at it. Ask me when you need something or someone destroyed."

The two smaller warriors gave each other a look. Cleared their throats. "About your apprentice - "

"Hrrraaaah!" The Kurgan shook his fists, stretched his arms out to the sky, calling. A bolt of lightning answered, speared out of the blue and struck him. In an instant, the remains of his wounds burned away. "The lightning smiles upon me! I thank you for her, O Khan of Khans! She is most exquisite, she has provided me with more entertainment than anything I can recall in the last three centuries! Better than the Battle of Kursk, better than pogroms and concentration camps and trench warfare and the American Civil War! She was pure and she was innocent and now look at her!"

The Witch could not help shivering. Madness in those eyes. "Maybe I shouldn't have let our Khan convince me to give her to you."

"Do you regret it?" The rain now, was pouring. The wind howled. The Kurgan glowed with power, with the storm's touch. It would take him time to reel in his Quickening and conceal himself again, after such a battle as this day's. "She is Strong! Stronger than any newborn should be! She took on the Highlander with a gun in one hand and gladius in the other, and broke him and stole his power for her own! Pain is her bread, despair is the air she breathes, hate is what she drinks!"

"We... cannot argue with your results."

"No. You cannot!" He gathered a drop of purest Quickening in his palms, and crouched low before them. Sparks of lightning, glimmering, coalescing into shining silver fluid, hovering. "Touch it and see that bloody day in Roanapur for yourselves. It is glorious!"

The small masters looked at each other once more. They steeled themselves, and saw through his eyes, heard through his ears, tasted and touched and lived with his body for a day.

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	8. Chapter 8: A Diploma Printed in Blood

"Tales of the Kurgan"

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Disclaimer: I don't own Highlander.

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It was quite the show so far. There was enough entertainment to distract him from the dirty, humid stench of the city. It had been a stroke of genius, if the Kurgan did think so himself, to have her wearing that silly school girl uniform. White blouse, a teal skirt that billowed out at her calves. A candy pink back-pack with a bright yellow smiley face pinned to it.

Drew all the wrong attention, here in Roanapur. It made her look even younger than her apparent age.

Hilarious! Starting with the first little mortal to flip up her skirt, Akane opened with a restrained verbal warning. Then she had threatened him off with her Desert Eagle.

And then the escalation. The punk returned with more punks, with their own guns. She broke them.

Silly little mortals. Could not take a hint. He supposed he could understand though. She was not just some little girl that was fighting off unwelcome advances anymore. She was a challenge to the gang's authority. Within minutes of her putting down the first half-dozen goons, she had gotten a reputation in this most criminal of cities, and the punks had to make one more try to save face and maim and gang-rape the bitch, or they would lose all respect and be wiped out by the end of the week.

Twenty men with dirty AK-47 rifles, shotguns and an assortment of handguns had surrounded her as she continued on her inexorable walk toward the docks. Finally, he smiled. Finally. Too many for her to hold back on, at least not without revealing herself, or getting caught.

_If you get yourself lethally wounded by one of these foolish brats, if you let anyone other than myself fuck you, my precious apprentice, I will punish you as I have not done in years._

Ah, that finally triggered her fear. Of course she had nothing to fear from them, but from him... So she let herself go. Beautiful, a whirling dance of bullets and edges, as she slid through them, howling, angry that they would not just let her be, when all that time she had been trying not to kill anyone.

She slid around and flipped through the air at angles they were not used to shooting at. Three of them shot each other by accident. Then she was at a newsstand. The salesman was already dead, and the hate was swelling in her. She somersaulted up onto the roof of the stand and then she was on the rooftops, breaking up their ambush. Most of them were on the ground, and from up there, she flew in great bounds from building to building, picking off their men on the roofs and the balconies. It was a running battle that lasted for an hour, as they attempted to follow her by motorcycle, and one pick-up truck with a 50 calibre light machine gun mounted on it.

By the time it was over she had one of the assault rifles slung around her shoulder, as she stalked onward towards the Black Lagoon, a Glock shoved down her left skirt pocket and a .38 revolver in her right. Three punks were shot through the head, two were beheaded, one had a shotgun shoved so far up his ass that he was dying from blood loss and internal injuries, and the rest had finally run when she had descended from the rooftops and by sheer force of muscle and life energy, used her bare hands to flip their truck over.

_If you had just killed the first one_, he taunted her,_ You would not have needed to harm the others. This is the consequence of misplaced mercy. Now you are already famous in this city, 'Monster-Girl.'_

It was when they reached the docks at sunset that the Kurgan felt that old sensation, as of ripples of water caused by a stone splashing into a pond. This was not mad Balalaika that had requested this favor him, but one he had met centuries before.

He saw his apprentice almost bent over, gasping at the feel of another so much older than herself, her Quickening warning her that his could swallow her up.

_Who is that?_

_It is one of those idiot traditionalists. Well, we might as well accept the invitation, or he will disrupt your graduation rite until we do._

The Kurgan unwrapped the cloak of shadows from himself, and appeared before her. He lead her by way of twisting alleys and unmarked paths to an abandoned section of the docks. They entered a warehouse that was half submerged in the sea, tilted to one side from its inadequate support pilings sinking into the soft bed. Here, the air smelled of saltwater and rust, and the old corpses of dead rats. There was nothing in there except shattered wooden crates and stacking pallets and rotting garbage, and one rusted, burned out shell of a car.

The precious little bird examined the stranger staring at her, while the Kurgan tasted her surface thoughts.

The man in front of her was Caucasian. Taller than her, but not that tall, his face was lean and angular, with a straight, narrow nose and a long chin. In the dim light from the dying shafts of sunset coming in through gaps in the walls and through the shattered windows high above them, his eyes might have been gray or they might have been blue. His hair was short, either a dark blond or a light brown. He wore a beige overcoat despite the swampy, clinging heat of Roanapur, and from it, he drew a long, straight sword with a cruciform hilt decorated by a flare arcing down from the straight cross, inscribed with a name.

She recognized him, of course, from her Master's stories.

"Kurgan," his face twisted as he spoke. "At last you have come out of your hole."

"My 'hole' as you say, Highlander, is the largest nation on this Earth. Kruger-Savelyev Inc. produces steel, leverages the gas and oil market in Eastern Europe, and has made me a very, very wealthy creature. I even pay taxes, you know, taxes that have made many officials of the Russian Federation pleased to be among my friends. You should try being a productive member of society sometime," the Kurgan's chuckle echoed throughout the emptiness, "instead of a gloryhound murdering his own kind for a Prize that has no meaning."

"You have killed more than any other living creature!" the Highlander snarled. "You murdered tens of thousands of civilians in every war you took part in, and you call me - "

Now, the Kurgan laughed. His power made the air of the warehouse heavy. It clung to the skin, mocking, sticky, foul. "I only kill mortals, now. I have not been mortal in thousands of years! While you, you still kill our brothers and sisters."

He stretched out his massive arms. They were bared by his black leather vest. The faded jeans he wore were snug and torn.

"Behold! I do not even carry a sword! Are you really going to attack an unarmed man, O Brother of mine?"

The Highlander raised his sword above his head, an offensive stance that revealed confidence in his speed. So much more refined than when the Kurgan had first fed a foot of steel into the other's gut with such casual ease, long ago, in Scotland.

"I am Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod! You, Kurgan, you are scum with no name."

MacLeod drew power into his blade and charged with a yell.

The Kurgan stood still, and smiled toothily.

The sword whistled down in a chop that would cut a man in half. It clanged with a glowing explosion of sparks, Power against Power setting light to the air, as it halted against the flat of a short, broad blade barring its path.

"Get out of the way, little girl. You do not have the experience to stand against those such as I."

Akane murmured, "Unfortunately, this scum does happen to be my master. Sorry about this." She shifted her feet and pushed from the ground up, with her calves and thighs and the compact strength in her back all channeled up her arms, and sent the Highlander backstepping ten feet.

In disbelief, MacLeod exclaimed, "Is the great Kurgan really letting some brat fight for him?"

"Oh, Connor," the Kurgan shook his head, let the syllables drip in a lazy drawl, "You do bore me so. This young swallow shall break your wings, little Brother. If I should have to assist her in putting you in your place, she knows that what I have in store for her is worse than death." He dispersed himself to the shadows, and watched.

"Well then," MacLeod sighed. "Will you observe the old courtesies, little girl?" He saluted her with his sword, not at all worried about dropping his guard.

Akane was getting pissed off. This whole day was a disaster. And she hated being called a little girl. It was one thing for the Kurgan to do it, but this snobbish looking fashion model with his artfully trimmed five o'clock shadow and leather dueling gloves? "Tendo Akane. Student of the biggest bastard in history. And a great big fuck you to you too." Then she pulled out the .38 and emptied it on the Highlander.

The cracks of gunfire were not as loud as the air being broken by MacLeod's glowing blade slashing back and forth. Bright starbursts shone when his Quickening-soaked steel shattered the projectiles.

_That is a nice trick, cutting a bullet. The Highlander has found other interesting teachers too. Still, not a skill for myself - body-hardening techniques are more suited to me. Perhaps we should see if you can learn it, little bird. If you survive._

The Highlander flared his Quickening, became the gale, flew at her, his blade sweeping forward.

_ Um. Master... any advice?_

_ Be clever, be fleet of foot, use every weapon._

She forced him to slow when she fired off the rounds of the Glock. He was a whirlwind of cutting light, still approaching. If it came down to blade and blade, she knew she had no chance.

Akane pulled on her Power too. Only she did not have as much. She could only use it in short bursts to blur backwards as she kept firing. When the Glock was empty, she switched to the AK-47. Its rattling fire was drowned by the continuous thunder of MacLeod's defensive bladework.

She ducked around one of the rusting steel support pillars, and wondered why she had bothered - the Highlander's sword cut through without even slowing. She dodged and danced and parried.

Their footsteps splashed through the puddles on the floor. It dirtied the hem of her skirt.

The Kurgan smiled as he sensed her irritation that the Highlander was skilled enough that the foul water did not even touch his coat. She was desperate and afraid and angry. He loved it, savored the flavors coming off of her.

MacLeod was faster. Each time their blades met in a shower of sparks, energies clashing, she felt her Quickening drain, almost dropping her sword from the forces traveling down her wrist and elbow. Each parry made her teeth clench - she felt the power of his attacks all the way to the base of her spine.

But she had trained against someone stronger and faster than herself for years. It could have been worse.

Akane leaped up, feet just clearing the low leg-cut that would have gone through her knees. She flipped up and backwards onto a stack of pallets next to one of the walls. She threw the rifle at him for another split-second's delay while he cut it in half, and flung herself up and out at the upper half of a stepladder, the bottom of which had rusted away to nothing. Old metal creaked and swayed and groaned as she made her way to the catwalks hanging from the ceiling.

He could jump farther and higher than she could too, and got up there as soon as she did, but stopped long enough to assume his wide, low stance, though here, he needed to be side-on to her to keep it.

She held her gladius straight out at him, sighting down along its point. Her feet were set in a half crouch, to charge.

"Ah, I don't suppose, if I give up, you'd let me go so we can fight again, later, maybe when I'm a bit better?"

Gravely, MacLeod intoned, "There can be only one."

"Yeah, well, nuts to you, you Eurotrash prick." On the narrow, rusting path, fifty feet in the air, with support braces going up the sides of the safety rails, this was probably the most advantageous place to fight with a stabbing weapon as opposed to a slashing one. The speed difference would be reduced.

They watched each other for an endless second. He was not charging first because he needed that foot placement to have the stability for his high speed cuts, Akane decided. Maybe she was not worm food yet.

She held her left arm straight in front to help her gauge the distance, and pulled the gladius back until it just above and beside her ear, with the point angled down and ahead. It would give her the chance to parry an incoming vertical chop, slide through, and then thrust when it was her distance.

Akane charged.

He leaped sideways off the narrow platform, snagged one of the support lines with his off hand, and as she passed him, unable to stop quickly enough, he swept the blade about in a long, looping cut that sprayed her blood through the air. His horizontal flip ended with him behind her, two strides away.

She turned around, pale. Blood was pouring down her opened belly. Her teal skirt was darkened as it was soaked through. The pale pink of her intestines was visible through her blouse.

"That's just cheating," Akane groaned.

"I'm impressed that one as young as you can still be standing."

"Yeah, well. This isn't exactly an unfamiliar experience."

MacLeod stepped forward and slashed for her neck, uncaring as he cut through the supports holding up the catwalk. This was already over.

Akane focused the agony in her midsection. Called up every awful memory of her training, and burned Quickening. This was nothing. Getting disemboweled was not even in the top twenty worst things the Kurgan had put her through. She lashed out with her own weapon, in the opposite arc, stepping forward and falling to her knees, not even attempting to hit MacLeod.

The Highlander's eyes were comically wide as they both fell through the air, as their narrow battlefield gave way. They got wider when she pulled the Desert Eagle from the hip holster under her baggy skirt, and poured her life force into the gun mechanism, into the bullets. A hail of glowing projectiles rained down on him, and without his footing, he could not use his full speed slashes. He was able to deflect a few from his core, his heart, his head...

And then one smashed through his right wrist. He lost his sword then. Another sent the pulverized bones of his shoulder out of his back. A third glowing bullet liquefied his guts, sent him spinning. A fourth severed his spine above his hips.

They smashed into the weakened floor together, and through, into the dark water below. She came down on top of him, pierced through his breastbone with the thick, heavy gladius.

Akane straddled him, and clamped one hand over his neck. When the waves receded, the water revealed them completely, and when they washed in, the two were both fully submerged.

Between waves, Akane whispered, "Live your life over, with another name."

Then she dragged his power out of him. The sea was pushed away, a bubble of lightning and storm as his soul came out through his mouth and nose and ears and eyes, and into hers, as they both screamed. Sand exploded around them.

And the warehouse above collapsed, accompanied by the laughter of the Kirgan.

_Good._

After that, her giving that Rock fellow his first death was anticlimactic. Akane had not even needed to kill that crazy bitch with the guns.

They left Thailand, with the thanks of a crazed, scarred blond named Balalaika. "I want very much to be the one to train the little boy, but I don't want there to be the bad feelings if I had been the one to kill him first." She gave Akane a fistful of loose gemstones, and for the Kurgan, a long kiss, with a bite that tore his tongue bloody.

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She sat on the rooftop looking up at the moon. It was summer in Tokyo. A blazing hot summer. After the years in Siberia, it was too hot. During the warmer months, the Kurgan just moved their training farther North, as though he never wanted her heart to thaw. She could not sleep in this heat, not even with an electric fan point-blank next to her bed.

Akane was tempted to call the storm, to bring down the rain as the Kurgan could. But she still did not have enough power for that, not even with what she stole. She might be able to call down a few lightning bolts, but in this weather?

Ugh, she hoped Nabiki had the sense to stay out of her things. She did not know what she would say if Nabiki asked her why there were swords and firearms in her bag.

"Hi, Ranma. Couldn't sleep either?"

She felt him shaking his head behind her.

"I had you," he said. "I'm sure of it. I've been thinking about it all night. How did you do it, Akane? Don't you have to breathe anymore? It's one thing to heal popped joints, to fix broken bones, I can do that too... but not breathing? No blood going to your brain?"

Akane sighed. Of all the things they could talk about, old memories, old dreams, and he was asking her about what he thought was some funky martial arts trick.

The everpresent rage inside her called for her to smash him down through the roof. She did not.

"It's not a trick you can learn."

"Oh, come on. That's got to be the result of some of that training you refuse to talk about. What did you do to be able to do all that in just ten years? You weren't even a quarter of the way to where you are, when you went away."

Now, she felt cold.

"All right, fine." He hopped off the roof, hung on to the edge with one hand. "I'll just go have another shower, I guess." He swung in through a window.

"Baka," Akane said softly.

Through the silent air, she felt the thread of the master's mind touching hers. _They approve of you, young swallow. They did not believe it, at first, when I told them what you did to the Highlander._

_ I release you, Tendo Akane. With the viciousness you have gained, the techniques you have, and the power you stole, I welcome you to the princes and princesses of Earth._

_ You are a savage born._

Great. Officially freed and acknowledged as worthy by a total of three Masters. She had not dared dream of this moment for a decade and now that it was here, she felt lost, and alone, and empty.

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End file.
